Core Record

Maker

Verstage;A.Halcrow;

Date

1903

Description

These drawings represent an early stage of a project in which W.R. Lethaby's ideas of structure and external treatment are worked through, by his protegee, A. Halcrow Verstage. This was a stage in the design process often followed by Arts and Crafts practitioners with their more talented pupils. It was experienced by Lethaby himself, when working in the office of Norman Shaw as a young man. They are clearly dated 1903, the year when Lethaby began to form his own plans and ideas, and presumably talked them over with Verstage who was a Central student and an assistant in the second class in the Architecture Department at the time. Many of the details and decorative features of the building show evidence of Lethaby's symbolism. Massing and treatment, are as in the finished building, stylistic detail differs; certain features such as the relief and coloured sculpture (characteristic of the Central School of Arts and Crafts theory) shown here were not executed, although blocks were built into the building of these. A. Halcrow Verstage attended classes at the Central School in 1896. He joined the LCC Architects Department in 1900.

Purchased with assistance of the Resource/V&A Purchase Grant Fund.

Accession Number

F.544.1-2

Subject

Elevations of LCC Central School of Arts and Crafts and Day Training College

Material

tracing paper

Provenance

Haslam & Whiteway Ltd, 105 Kensington Church Street, London W8

Rights

University of the Arts London, Central Saint Martins Museum and Study Collection